An imagined cast – a very tall, shiny-domed, environmentalist, ex-politician, musician, male
An imagined acknowledgement of country – I’d like to thank the Plairhekehillerplue people from Emu Bay NW Tasmania, for their ecological stewardship, and their diplomatic governance for over 2000 generations, and apologise for my role in the ongoing disruption of last 10 generations. I also ask for assistance with the infancy of our understanding of country – on which our species survival depends.
An imagined over used word – the disruption of the common usage of the word disruption.
An imagined context – language as insidious genocide weaponry
An imagined opening and closing scene – Portrait of another disruption, circa 1981.
You are staying at the Menai Hotel South Burnie, NW Coast, Tasmania, circa ‘81
Staring from a smudged 5th floor window,
Morning after the gig the night before,
Picture the sticky BOAGS soaked carpet of that Menai band room, Mr X playing support,
A crowd of flannies and mullets, thongs and crutch-huggin-stubbies, middle of winter.
Next morning, awake, looking out over South Burnie’s, lichen-tinged, asbestos rooftops,
Pure povo,
Pulp ‘n Paper chimney stacks belching that addictive smell of slightly off sweet meats,
An Easterly whips up the Bass Strait surf,
A bank of chlorine foam the colour of mucus piped from pulp to surf, blow back,
Piling up off the beach and across the highway in front of the mill,
Families whoop in delight driving through, car disappearing into mucus,
Kids squealing, belt free in the back of the rusty commodore.
5th floor Menai, looking through your misty window breath, you see a couple of surfers,
Out riding steep ashen faced dumpers, clawing up out of shallows,
Waves browned by sunken woodchips,
Dumpers slap the grey beach sands,
Washing up, ancient forest chips and a few tenacious spiky blowies, impervious to poisons
Slapping the sands where three skanky kids play, near the storm water drain.
Rub that foggy Menai window, stooping tall man, rub with your jumper sleeve,
There see it, across the road,
A picket line outside the rusty Pulp and Paper mill gates,
Look closer, who is that, a young Brian Green – an also-ran-Labour-opposition-leader,
In brown vinyl jacket, with collars wide enough to trigger op-shop hipster ejaculate,
Barking slogans handed down from Chiffley, to high-viz acolytes, cupping cup-a-soups.
And here you are, too tall and hungover – haven’t touched a drop –
From passive smoking under the Parcans on that squat Menai stage, ears ringing,
Trying to build a career in this god forsaken place,
You, with your Sydney Northern Beaches birthright born of the fortunate people,
Where every day the surf is caressed by a warm, sea breeze Zephyrs,
Here you, in the poorest electorate, in the poorest State – the Menai, cunt of a place,
With a one bar radiator and a guitar case full of broken dreams,
Fallen from pop-grace like only a silent, private Christian can fall,
And you can’t believe what’s outside your window…
So you write these words… in the tradition of the great 18th century Hymn-sters
The social media of its day… a perfect evangelis song of horror and redemption (who cares if it doesn’t scan. It’s a cry from the heart, from within the devil’s lair, the Menai…)
Brought up in a world of changes
Part time cleaner in a holiday flat
Stare out to sea at the ships at night
No anaesthesia, I’m gonna work on it day to day
No zephyr no light relief it seems
But maybe it’s a dream
This is my home
This is my sea
Don’t paint it with the future, of factories
I want to stay, I feel okay
There’s nothing else as perfect
I’ll have my way
Brought up in a world of changes
Two children in the harbour
They play their game storm-water drain
Write their contract in the sand, it’ll be gray for life
But you can’t stop the sun
From shining on and on and getting you there
Tide forever beckons you to leave
But something holds you back
It’s not the promise of the swell or a girl
Just a hope that someday someway it’ll be okay
So you stop and say
This is my home
This is my sea
Don’t paint it with the future of factories
This is my life
this is my right
I’ll make it what I want to
I’ll stay and I’ll fight
“Burnie” – Midnight Oil (1981)
The City of Burnie the love child of disruption long before a multi-millionaire Prime Minister, started bandying that word around with the help of his agile speechwriters.
‘Disruption’ callously and implicitly says, “come on people, it’s your fault if you didn’t see change coming.” So what if this ‘disruption’ means your kids won’t ever be able to afford to own a home; it’s your fault… it’s not this creeping rot of silent inequality, this global shift that means that apparently 17 people control 80% of the world’s wealth – according to Christine Legarde – it is just disruption, nobody is pulling the policy levers to make it happen; wake up people it’s your fault if you didn’t see it… like I did, when I had my exciting start up called ozemail… I saw that daggy name had a shelf-life… sold it at just the right time, with a couple of larrikin lads from Sydney’s Private schools… alright future white-collar crims, but don’t split hairs… politics of envy, politics of envy, people… wake up…
It’s your fault if the Paper Mill closes – with minimal global change-management – and you take a package, and your son will never have that apprenticeship you and the missus were hoping for, and your drinking spikes with self-medicated-depression, and your wife leaves you with self-medicating-adultery, and you get a bit punchy with the bouncer at the Menai, and get locked up a night or two, and your boy doesn’t wanna come home every night, and you’re a man, and you don’t ask for help, and you worry about him, and you’re a man and you don’t say anything to him, but you look… you give him that look… and he’s almost a man and he’s supposed to understand… and you don’t know it, but he’s trading blow jobs for a six pack of BOAGS in the council car park… wake up buddy, it’s just a disruption.
And if Brian Green – the wide collar worker – had made it to Federal Politics, he could’ve given the rebuttal: could the politics of disruption be just the shadow of the politics of envy. Could it be an insidious way of saying to the less fortunate masses, “you have nothing to be envious of… you just didn’t see it coming you, loser… this stagnation of wages growth… come on, a bit of agility people please…” Brought up in a world of changes… Fuck the theatre… The toothless theatre, playing to subscribers and status junky festival audiences. Let’s have a song.
Brought up in a world of changes…
This is my life
this is my right
I’ll make it what I want to
I’ll stay and I’ll fight
This is my home
This is my sea
I’m a playwright by trade, and like Wainwrights and Shipwrights, in this modern world Playwrights are pretty useless. It is a dying art. Seriously disrupted.
Where I live on the NW Coast… is the home of the Tommeginna people. So actually…
This is their home,
This is their sea.
This is my life
This is my right
I’ll make it what I want to
I’ll stay and I’ll fight
And fight they did – even further up the coast at Cape Grim (Pennemuker country) – the warrior, Tunneminawaite fought hard, when his sisters and aunties were taken for the sex trade to Kangaroo island – servicing the whaling industry. He fought, he murdered and he was the last man publically hung in Australia – in Melbourne, just down the road from Flinders Street station.
Was this just a kind of disruption? Or did this have another more appropriate name – genoruption perhaps? Have to be careful of the insidious violence of word weaponry.
Listen careful when they harnessed against their will. “Cleansing” is a beautiful word (West Germanic – Klainson, via Old English Claensian – purity, chastity, justifying)
But put “Cleansing” beside the word “Ethnic”…
This is my life
This is my right…
Disruption – from the Latin Disrupto – to split apart, break into pieces, to shatter.
Fuck our insipid toothless theatre. I’ll never write again. Can’t even imagine it.
Scott Rankin is the Creative Director of Big hART, which began 25 years ago in Burnie as a response to the closure of the Pulp Mill.
(with thanks to Midnight Oil)